Internal and external link checker

Internal links are how a crawler finds the next page and how ranking spreads. A document with none is a dead end. External links are fine; this is a census, not a penalty.

Uses the public POST /api/audit. After the free daily check, continue in the workspace.

What we measure

Each <a> with an http(s) href, resolved against the final URL. Same origin counts as internal. rel containing nofollow is tallied on top, not instead.

We do not crawl the destinations. A 404 behind an internal link is a different job. Relative paths such as /about are internal once resolved.

What to change

Give the page at least a few descriptive internal links — not “click here”, and not a footer-only graph. Nofollow belongs on untrusted user content, not on your own articles.

This is not a backlink index and not a broken-link crawler. It answers “what does this HTML point at?” after one fetch.

Why internal links are counted at all

A crawler discovers pages by following links, and a page with no internal links is reachable only through the sitemap or from outside. Internal links also carry the anchor text that tells the engine what the destination is about; a site whose only internal links are the navigation has one description for every page — the menu label. This tool counts what the HTML points at after one fetch so you can see whether the page is a node in the site or a leaf.

Each <a> with an http(s) href is resolved against the final URL. Same origin is internal, anything else external, and rel="nofollow" is tallied separately because a nofollow link exists on the page but passes no endorsement.

Common mistakes

Article pages with zero links in the body, so every related page depends on the menu. Anchor text that says “here”, “read more” or the bare URL. Nofollow on your own product pages because a plugin applied it to every external-looking link, including your subdomain. Links to the HTTP version of your own site, counted as external because the origin differs.

What the audit of https://example.com/ returned on 5 September 2026

As found

<p>This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.iana.org/domains/example">More information...</a></p>
<!-- links: total 1, internal 0, external 1, nofollow 0 -->

Fixed

<p>This domain is for use in illustrative examples in <a href="/docs/">documents</a>.</p>
<p><a href="/about/">Why example.com is reserved</a> · <a href="https://www.iana.org/domains/example">IANA registration</a></p>
<!-- two internal links with descriptive anchors, the external one kept -->

example.com has exactly one link and it leaves the site. For a one-page domain that is the whole truth; for a product page the same census would mean no path to the pricing, the docs or the next article.

Questions

How many internal links should a page have?

Enough that every page a reader would want next is one click away, with anchor text that names it. There is no magic number; three descriptive links beat forty menu items.

Does this tool find broken links?

No. It counts and classifies the links in the HTML; it does not fetch the destinations. Use the HTTP status checker on the URLs you care about.

Are links inside the header and footer counted?

Yes, everything in the fetched HTML counts. That is why a page with a large menu can show many internal links and still have none in the content.

See the full audit in your workspace

Other tools